


Into The Woods

by AkaShika



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Childhood Friends, Community: hp_drizzle, Gen, Gen Work, HP Drizzle Fest 2019, Kid Fic, if you can call it that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-01 23:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20551274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkaShika/pseuds/AkaShika
Summary: Harry's never had a summer holiday before, but when Uncle Vernon wins a holiday for four, he finally gets a chance.





	Into The Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for this go to my beta without whom, this work would be so messy. Also thanks to the mods for running a fantastic fest for us all

When Uncle Vernon comes home happy one day after the school summer holidays started, Harry isn’t sure what to think. Instead, as he helps Aunt Petunia with dinner then takes his seat at the table, he waits for Uncle Vernon to tell the family his news. 

“Turns out we won that prize draw at work,” he says gruffly as he picks up his fork. “The prize was a bit more than I thought.”

“Oh?” Aunt Petunia frowns at the table before she gets up and gets a bag of grated cheese from the fridge. She puts the whole bag in a bowl and sets that down between her husband and son before she speaks again. “What was it then? I thought it would be a cheap bottle of wine again.” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. 

“Holiday for four,” Uncle Vernon says. “All inclusive for four days at an Edwardian hotel in York. We’ll have to take the boy but there’s plenty he can do there while we’re with Dudley.”

Harry doesn’t dare look up. He doesn’t want to risk Uncle Vernon saying he has to stay with Aunt Marge, or even worse, Mrs Figg. 

Aunt Petunia puts down her fork. “I don’t know,” she says. “What if something happens?”

Harry tries not to let his heart hurt at that. It’s tiny things like that make him wish Aunt Petunia loved him. 

“It’s one of those state homes, Pet. He could spend hours in those gardens and he’d be fine.”

“Hmm.”

Nothing else is said about it, so Harry lets it slip to the back of his mind. 

* * *

Being packed into the car with three suitcases, a rucksack, and three Dursley’s seems both like a dream and a nightmare. When they get out of the car at a huge country house they are greeted by someone who seems to be a butler, and who leads the four of them to rooms so lavish Harry doesn’t know how he can ever go back to Privet Drive. They’re served lunch along with the other families staying at the hotel, then Harry is left alone after being warned not to wander too far and not to cause trouble. 

Seizing his moment of freedom, Harry runs through the main doors and out into the gardens. He’s free! He runs, and he laughs, and he runs some more, until he hits a hedge at the boundary, then he turns and runs alongside it, the leaves brushing his palms and fingers. 

When he finally stops, panting and smiling, he notices a forest that had been hidden behind the enormous house. 

As much as Harry isn’t able to play around at home, he’s still just seven years old. So when he saw the forest, his first thought was to find out what was in it.

The first thing Harry finds is a frog. He picks it up and prods it a bit, but in the stories, frogs always have to be kissed by a princess. He holds on to it tightly as he moves through the trees, though, just in case. Maybe he’ll find a princess, he thinks. Maybe she and the Prince will take him away to live with them in their castle. 

He doesn’t find a princess, but he does find a boy. 

“Who are you?” the boy asks, his eyes wide in his round face.

Harry frowns. “I’m Harry, who are you?”

The boy mimics Harry’s face. “I’m Neville.” he looks at Harry for a few more seconds before he spots the frog. “What are you doing with Trevor?”

“I found him,” Harry says, and he holds the frog closer to his chest. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep the frog, but it had been nice to have a friend for a while. “Is he yours?” Harry asks, already a little sad. 

The other boy nods, but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything before Harry hears someone call, “Neville!”

“I have to go,” Neville says quickly. “Bye.”

Harry holds out the frog, and he runs off holding the frog tightly in both hands and Harry watches him from around the edges of the trees. 

“Good,” And old lady says as she puts her hand on Neville’s shoulders. “I’m glad you found Trevor alright,” she says. 

“Gran,” Neville says excitedly. “There was someone in the woods. I saw a boy! He—”

“Don’t be silly, Neville,” the old lady says. “No one can get into the woods. Now, come along. Your Uncle Algie is here for afternoon tea today, and Auntie Enid brought meringue, isn’t that lovely?”

Harry makes his way back to the little country hotel. He thinks that it’s strange, though, when the next day, he can’t see the trees anywhere. When he asks one of the gardeners, they say the nearest forest is five miles away, and Harry can’t help wondering if he had imagined it. 

In fact, by the time he goes to Hogwarts, three years later, his mind is so full of other things that he wouldn’t have remembered the incident with the mystery boy and the toad and the vanishing forest at all, if not for two small things. 

The first was a bushy-haired girl mentioning a boy named Neville having lost his toad. Harry had thought it a funny coincidence until he saw the boy with the same round cheeks and wide eyes with both his hands tightly wrapped around his toad. 

Harry smiled, and he wondered if Neville remembered him.

It was something that had been pushed out of his head almost entirely during his years at Hogwarts, and afterwards, with everything they’d been through, it just seemed pointless.

That was why it was so completely unexpected when Neville brought it up when they were all at Longbottom Hall. 

“Gran had beefed up all the security when I was about seven,” Neville said. “All the protections we had during the war was because she did it then.”

Ron had been confused, and Hermione had been intrigued, but both wanted to know what happened that caused the Dowager Longbottom to put wartime security on her home seven years before the war restarted. 

Neville laughed. “Well,” he said. “The same time Uncle Algie dropped me out of a window, I’d told Gran I saw someone in the woods. There’s a hotel place open on the other side but we have loads of muggle repelling wards. When I told Gran, she activated some of the older wards. It helped when we finally were at war.”

Harry smiled and turned away, but Neville saw the movement. “You do remember then?” he asked.

For a moment, Harry wondered how much their friendship would have changed if he hadn’t been so overwhelmed in those first weeks at Hogwarts. Then he decided it didn't matter. He couldn't change it now, but he and Neville were friends. That was all he cared about.

**Author's Note:**

> This story/art is part of an anonymous fest: drizzle 2019. Reveals will be in mid-October. Please do not repost anywhere else without explicit permission from the original creator.


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